<Begin Segment 10>

TI: And when you thought about going out for these fairly large contributions of two thousand dollars or more, and you started doing that, what were the, what kind of resistance did you get from people to contribute those amounts?

HK: Well, they were very hesitant, you know. They didn't want to tell you. Well, I myself got to a point where people didn't, you know, they would cross the street when they would see me. And I'm sure that that's the experience of other people, that were called prime solicitors. Cherry Kinoshita, she raised the second largest amount of money for this whole program. Grace Uyehara was number one. And I'm sure that they met the same experience. 'Cause, and people would say, "Okay, we'll donate," and I could go back and you never hear from them. And the chapter sponsor collects these sponsors, programs, to raise money.

TI: Well, do you think people's reluctance to donate was because they didn't believe in the project itself or the goals of the project, or are they just reluctant to donate in general? What do you think was going on?

HK: Well I, I think both. People are reluctant to (being locked in to) donate, and they have their own, own places they like to donate to. They have their own... so, and I think a lot of people, I believe, didn't think this was going to fly. They were just, you know, it'd be just be money wasted. I can't tell, you know, but whether that's what they thought. But for whatever reason, it was very difficult to raise the money, I should say that. That's why I always look at your five hundred thousand dollar Microsoft or other things out there and say, "Oh boy." 'Cause ours was... one of the things we wanted, the board members contributed a thousand dollars up front. And incidentally, we wrote our -- Min and myself, we took out a two-page Pacific Citizen, two sheets, I should say -- an insert for launching the fund drive. And I think, I attribute the success, that we accounted for every penny, that is, with the periodic report on income and expenditures. That's critical. You have to tell the people -- particularly if you're depending on donations -- who donated. And I wrote about twenty articles during my -- in the Pacific Citizen, that is -- with the feed back, and the status. And also we had this donor's listing. And in fact I have one there. It lists everyone of the people who donated. And we computerized this thing, Bacon Sakatani kept the computer, but the money came to myself and I manually transcribed off of each of these listings, donors and addresses and so on.

TI: With all this work, I mean, how successful was the program?

HK: Well, under my chairmanship we raised half a million dollars, and that was over two years, a period of two years. And then Dr. Mae Takahashi from Fresno followed me because I became national president in 1986. And we raised another half a million, and these are not big companies. There... and I think it was successful to the extent that this funded the LEC operation totally. And so they were in office -- we had a Washington, D.C. office -- and that was from, let's see, '80... oh incidentally, I should say that we started with twenty three thousand dollars. That is... you know, JACL couldn't engage in lobbying. So at the Honolulu convention they said, "Okay, we're going to turn this lobbying effort to the LEC of JACL." Twenty three -- no, not, twenty-three hundred dollars, because we had a donation of about that, or thirty-two hundred, something like that from the floor, and that's what we started with. And I consider the whole operation for the, from that period to redress, was 1988, so that would be about four years, I guess -- funded totally. And the staff, maintained a staff in Washington, D.C. is critical. In fact, I think that's the reason that JACL... a lot of people, in fact, different organizations, worked on it -- but then you really had to have a network of chapters throughout the country so that they could lobby their congressperson.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.